


Prime Re:

by BlueLightningAndNexus



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alchemy, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Demons, Dystopia, Escape, Futuristic Knights, Government Conspiracy, Knights - Freeform, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28057437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueLightningAndNexus/pseuds/BlueLightningAndNexus
Summary: In the metropolis of Prime, humanity's last stronghold after a nuclear war devastated the land, three teenagers--Final, Alexis and Duscant--long to see the outside world.
Relationships: Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s)





	Prime Re:

Alexis Natalia Rohana Saral--born January 7, Year 306 PC, in the Idris Medical Center, weighing 6 pounds and 6 ounces--would not live past the week, as her doctors explained. 

The birth had been a few weeks premature, and Alexis was underweight, but it wasn’t too much of a concern. Her mother, Anita Saral, was in good health, and Alexis was thought to be the same. But her obstetrician-gynecologists and midwife failed to account for one thing. 

Nicolas Saral, former Head Alchemist at the Prime Academy for the Gifted, and his wife Anita, the current president at the Division of Recovery and Rebuilding, were both carriers of the Violet Virus. The virus--long thought to be a residual mutation, caused by exposure to certain areas from the before times--was recessive, but in an astronomically rare case, Alexis Saral inherited it from her kin. 

The virus got its name from the color it turned one’s skin. Due to their immune systems severely weakening and their blood vessels narrowing, patients found themselves bruising almost to the touch. Eventually, any little action--down to sitting in a chair--was liable to cause bruising and burst blood vessels. Later-stage patients reported large patches of purple covering their body. 

With how late they caught it, the virus might have been treatable, or at least the patient might have more time. But for the newborn Alexis, the end was already in sight. 

Nicolas and Anita, naturally, took this news poorly. The parents dove head-first into the five stages of grief, but they seemingly got stuck on stage three: 

Bargaining. 

________________________________________________________________________

This brings us to January 11. 

It’d been less than 90 hours since the birth. After checking, double-checking and triple-checking that there was nothing that modern medicine could do for their daughter, Nicolas and Anita decided to approach the problem from a different angle altogether. 

“We can’t be sure this will work,” Anita told her husband over the sound of their daughter crying. He was holding Alexis in his arms, trying not to think about how his arms were leaving massive bruises on his baby girl, trying not to think about the possibility that his very touch was causing her pain. 

“We need to at least try,” Nicolas responded. “This is what I’m best at. This is the only thing I’m good at.”

Anita gave her husband a concerned look. She looked up at him, concern sprawled across her face. “That’s not true. Don’t say that.”

“I  **can** do this, Ani,” Nicolas told her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. He refused to take his eyes off Alexis, as if his unwavering gaze could fix her blood, as if she would turn to dust the second he looked away. “I need you to believe in me.”

Anita looked up at him. Auburn hair the color of fall leaves concealed her sleep-deprived eyes, sunken into her skull with worry. A mother’s grief would never rest, and it would never let her rest. 

“Nico,” she told him. “You know I believe in you. I love you.” 

Nicolas ran a hand through his unshowered hair. Sleep, hygiene, grooming, eating, these had all been the least of his concerns for the last couple of days. He’d called in every favor imaginable to get the materials for this ritual. 

“I love you too, darling,” he replied to his wife. Both turned to their daughter. 

Nicolas gave Alexis a kiss on the top of her head. For a moment, she stopped crying, as if suddenly aware of the significance of this moment. Anita gave her husband and Alexis a hug and planted her own kiss on her daughter’s cheek. 

“I love you, my princess,” Anita whispered to her daughter. 

Nicolas gave his wife the briefest of looks, then knelt down. He thanked the spirits that Alexis was a winter birth. The alchemy circuits in the earth were strongest this time of year. 

Placing Alexis in her chair, Nicolas took a moment to examine the markings on the floor. Intricate, alchemical symbols of transmutation had been carved into the stone floor, spanning the entire basement of their home. He was using every alchemy-enhancing artifact he had at his disposal: gold and silver bracelets on his arms, bronze rings around his fingers, and blue gloves on his hands, all charged with enough alchemical energy to bring down a building. Or rebuild it. 

The couple took several steps back, outside the parameter of the circle. Nicolas grabbed a steel cane, covered in alchemical symbols from handle to tip, in his left hand. Anita held Nicolas’ right hand tight in her own. 

The two parents looked at one-another. Anita nodded. “Do it,” she said, quietly. 

Without another word, Nicolas slammed the cane’s tip into the edge of the circle. The symbols on the floor began to glow a faint blue, the light converging on a calm Alexis. 

“Filia mea mutata est in lumine,” Nicolas muttered. “Fac eius tota.”

The light practically exploded, shifting from a cyan into a marine color that cast violent, frantic shadows against the wall. Anita watched, unsure of what to feel. Was this normal? Planned? 

(And for a brief, split second, she doubted if Nico knew how to do this, but she forced that thought away. He would save their daughter. Right?)

The lights changed once more, now a bright violet. Streams of energy darted through the air, like the fairies of old. Anita almost fell over; the ground itself was shifting beneath her. Her husband had closed his eyes, wisps of his black, unwashed hair flying in the air as white energy gathered at his fingertips. 

“Dabo,  **terram** !”

Nico shouted the final word, and with that, the last incantation was done. There was no stopping the ritual now. 

By this point, Alexis’ serenity and fascination with the lights turned to panic, and the child wailed in the center of the room. Anita instinctively stepped forward, reaching to her daughter, but Nico pushed her away with his free arm. 

“No, my love! You cannot cross the circle!”

He had a wild look in his eyes. On some level--some deep, theological level that Nico tried to push away--he found himself questioning.  _ This isn’t right _ , his brain told him.  _ Humans can’t do this. We can’t play God.  _

_ We don’t deserve to _ . 

Something felt wrong. The lights shifted once more, now a blood red. As the energy in Nico’s hand shifted to a dull gold (he could feel his fingers practically burning with alchemical energy, but by the gods, he had to finish this), those scarlet lights gathered close around his only child.  _ Too close _ . 

“Nico, stop this!”

“I...I can’t!”

His hand was practically smoking now, and the lights all converged on the shaking, sobbing Alexis. 

Anita pushed her husband’s arm out of the way and leaped into the circle, just as the scarlet energies found her daughter. A shockwave pushed the two parents away; Anita was sent flying against the nearby wall, and Nicolas was thrown into the desk. 

The smell of smoke filled his nostrils. A gray mist settled over the basement. Anita ran to their daughter, coughing and sputtering.

“Ani! Are you alright!?”

The alchemist was clutching his head in pain, eyes closed tightly. Did it work? After all that, it must have worked, right? 

“Nico...you’re gonna want to look at this.”

Nicolas rubbed his eyes, waving the smoke away, and stepped into the circle. The floor was charred in the shape of each alchemical center, and standing in the center of it all:

Anita Saral, holding their daughter, whose entire body was covered in stone. 

Nicolas’ heart stopped the second his vision cleared. In his arrogance, his  **pride** , he hadn’t saved his daughter at all. If he hadn’t already killed her, he’d condemned her to a life as a statue, like the heroes of old. 

_ This is my fault, this is my fault, this is my  _ **_fucking fault_ ** _ , that’s what I get for playing God. _

This train of thought thought evaporated the second Alexis turned to face him. Upon finding her father’s gaze, the small child gurgled and giggled, reaching out for him with a cold, marble hand. 

Scared beyond belief-- _ this must be a dream,  _ he thought,  _ surely this is a damn nightmare _ \--the alchemist reached out. The second their fingers met, Nicolas felt warm flesh. Her finger turned back to normal, then her hand, her arm, her entire body. Her skin had a healthy glow. Alexis remained fixated on her father, unaware of her sudden metamorphosis. 

“Well,” Nicolas said, clearing his throat. “...that’s unexpected.”

“N-Nico,” Anita said, “the bruises...they’re gone.” She moved her hand aside; no marks were left on the child’s flesh. 

“Darling, what did you do?” Anita finally asked. 

Nicolas Saral stared at his wife and daughter for a long, long time. “I don’t know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tbh I 100% just used Google Translate for the Latin stuff Nico was saying and I have absolutely no shame in admitting that


End file.
